[ aquarius records catalogue

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Showing results 51 through 100 of 2272.

Not many bands have a sound that fits their moniker as perfectly as A Sunny Day In Glasgow. Though they hail from Pennsylvania, their lush swirling day dream shoegaze pop really evoke not only so many great Glasgow bands but also exactly how we imagine a crisp bright sunny day over there to feel like. The band's debut Scribble Mural was an out of nowhere sleeper hit of 2007, in fact it was one of our favorite records of that year. Ashes Grammar finds them upping the ante, adding even more complex elements to their already dense mix of sounds. There is definitely a really nice 4AD influence in their sound as we're always reminded a bit of the Cocteau Twins, and there are BIG nods to Loveless era My Bloody Valentine. This time out you can also hear hints of 21st century composition in their saturated colorful approach to dense avant pop. Imagine if The Swirlies and Seefeel collaborated to create some seriously shimmering blissed out pop perfection!

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MPEG stream: Nitetime Rainbows
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Finally, new music from this East Coast sunshine shoegaze dream pop combo. Both of their full lengths, Scribble Mural and Ashes Grammar ended up being big faves around here, so we were definitely excited for more more more. And thankfully, everything we loved about ASDIG is still present, the shimmery jangly guitars, the ethereal vocal harmonies, the woozy rhythms, but this time around the band have added some new sounds, the opening track for instance, has a cool breakdown where things get all washed out and in comes a muted techno thump, before the launch right back into the rock, only to have that electronic skitter follow them, getting al tangled up with the vocals. The guitars are crunchy here and there as well as jangly, "Daytime Rainbows" is crazy catchy, and finds the band at their heaviest, channeling the spirit of nineties shoegaze legends the Swirlies. That electronica finds its way into the third song as well, before they finish off with "Piano Lessons", a midtempo groover with fuzzy low end synths, laid over a seriously dreamy swirl of sounds. As if 4 new songs weren't enough, this 12" also tags on 3 remixes, all of which take the original songs in dramatically different directions, the first is a pretty straight up electronic reimagining of the title track, the second one though buries the original under all sorts of crumbling distortion and blown out buzz. If you can imagine Wold remixing ASDIG, it might just sound like this. Finally, Ezekial Honig, whose Surfaces records we reviewed a while back, turns that same track into something super space-y and minimal, hushed and abstract. Really nice.

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More divine modern shoegaze, we just can't get enough. Fergit Belle And Sebastian. Camera Obscura, who's that? There's a new yummy band in town who're giving those bands a run for the money and adding a healthy dose of shoegaze-y shimmer -- umm, but the town they're in is not actually Glasgow. Nope, these kids are a trio from Philadelphia, but Ben Daniels and his twin sisters Robin and Lauren sound remarkably authentically wooly tartan'd. From now on when you think of Scotland, you just might find yourself thinking of A Sunny Day In Glasgow. Scribble Mural Comic Journal is a swirlin' shoegazin' blissed out treat all awash with fuzzy guitars and dreamgirl vocals in the lovely tradition of Sarah and Slumberland Records. With heaping helpings of gauzy Cocteau Twins swirl and abstract deconstructed My Bloody Valentine buzz. Press 'play', curl up in a windowseat, and enjoy!

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This Philly band captured our hearts a couple years back with one of the best shoegaze inspired records we had heard in ages, Scribble Mural Comic Journal, an album with which we fell more and more in love with every listen. So we were excited to see that they were picked to kick off this awesome new series of 7"s put out by Geographic North, called You Can't Hide Your Love Forever, which will also feature talented folks like Tarentel, Tussle, and more! These two new songs find ASDIG in perfect form, delivering more of their swirling daydream delights that remind us of brighter sunnier Cocteau Twins. Perfect for the 7" format as this is a band who creates songs that only get better with constant listens, we've been playing this over and over! Comes on cool blue vinyl and of course pretty limited as most of these sorts of things tend to be.

What a way to start your day... Morning Of My Life begins with what resembles a tuning session for the woodwind section of a pit orchestra. Long, drawn out high pitched whines drill themselves deep into your cranium. Egads. Fortunately they stop, giving way to pleasingly gentle strokes of an acoustic guitar and bows slipping across violin strings. Aaah, so nice! But then it tumbles abruptly into main man Nicolai Dunger's over-emotive vocals (think: a cross between Boz Scaggs and Joe Cocker) and strange jazzy ramblings. This cd's lone 42-minute track is uneven and joltingly varied for sure, but when Dunger's takes a lighter touch, the results are all too fleeting lovely moments of absolute bliss. Definitely a head-scratcher, but not in the dreamily wonderful odd way he's done in the past. We'd recommend maybe treating yourself to his two previous self-titled releases, before venturing this-a-way. This Taste of Ra is an acquired one.

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Also known as... Swedish soft folksy popster Nicolai Dunger! We were initially surprised to find him on the Hapna label, but after hearing just a couple of songs we see it's a perfect fit. His music under the alias A Taste Of Ra is far less conventionally structured than his (recently reissued domestically) 1999 solo album This Cloud Is Learning, and more slowly unravelling and hallucinatory. You might say, he's offering a Swedish take on the soulful bluesy avant-folk of contemporaries such as Devendra Banhart and Animal Collective. Yes, comparisons will undoubtedly be drawn, but Dunger possesses a more soft-spoken thoughtful delivery. Actually this album plays smoothly right into the new Vetiver EP which flows nicely right into the new Jim White soundtrack album (which is how Cup listened to those three new releases here today). Almost like a waking dream.

MPEG stream: Final Embrace
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Whereas under his given name Nicolai Dunger makes gentle music that invariably adheres to a linear traditional pop song structure, under the moniker A Taste Of Ra he roams freely in a slightly odd, aberrant nature. This is the second installment in his A Taste Of Ra self-titled trilogy. As he meanders the pastoral landscape, he puts the squeeze on what sounds like an old accordion, slides a bow drowsily across a few strings, picks a smattering of guitar strings and sings non-verbal ribbons of la-di-da-di's and Jandek-ish moaning utterances. Neo-folk melodic passages materialize unexpectedly, and no sooner have they become apparent than they dissipate. A slowly unravelling cryptic calm. For fans of Jandek, Wooden Wand And The Vanishing Voice and Skygreen Leopards.

MPEG stream: Flowers, Bats And Boats
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A change of pace from the usual black metal grimnity we expect from the Northern Silence label (who have brought us the likes of Angmar, Alcest, Amesoeurs, Stielas Storhett, Necrofrost...) comes from Milwaukee metallers A Tortured Soul (not to be confused with another metal band called This Tortured Soul fyi). In truth, they're on a Northern Silence sub-label called Eyes Like Snow, and actually ARE pretty grim. But not in a black metal way, unless you count Mercyful Fate/King Diamond as black metal (which they were definitely considered, back in the day, due to KD's LaVeyan Satanic philosophies). This is '80s styled epic power metal, with soaring-with-the-eagles, then-tearing-them-to-shreds singing that reminds us at times of Judas Priest's Rob Halford -- or even ol' Ozzy Osbourne -- especially on this album's best track, "Not Tonight"... Vocalist Black (that's his name) has a high falsetto attack that mixes it up with more growly-man discourse. Likewise, A Tortured Soul's music ranges from moody n' melodic to ball-crushingly heavy, from doomy plod to speedy chug, doing their damnedest to deliver on their negative, depressive moniker. For fans of KD's outfits, also Justice-era Metallica, Nevermore/Sanctuary, '90s Judas Priest, Iced Earth, maybe even Shadows Fall. All despite the looks of their very black metal seeming band logo/symbol!

MPEG stream: Tomorrow's Door
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Geoff Soule from Fuck's solo cd is varied and subdued. Very mellowwwwwww. If you are sad that Fuck is now defunct, then here is a chance to enjoy the similar quality and charm in a whole new guise.

RealAudio clip: Punk
RealAudio clip: Monkey
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Atomos is the most recent release from this offshoot of all time aQ guitar-drone faves Stars Of The Lid. Adam Wiltzie from that group, and his partner in A Winged Victory, Dustin O'Halloran, are joined here by a few other collaborators, most notably another big time aQ fave, Ben Frost! Whereas the last AWVFTS record seemed to focus on the piano, Atomos is much more orchestral, sprawling string-laden drones, chordal swells, extended tones, all woven into a haunting, elegiac threnody, darkly melodic and achingly melancholic, the A side is almost poppy with its exaggerated main melody, the dynamic swells almost jarring, but soon, the swirling background strings swell up and swaddle that melody, before dragging it back down into the dark, leaving something much more hushed and haunting, a sound that fades and blurs gradually, before dissipating completely, leaving just a single distant drone, which bleeds into the next track, at which point the piano returns, for a brief bit of wistful chamber music, over a smear of distant dronemusic, drifting atop a bed of excited strings, all woven into a gorgeous backdrop for the aching piano melodies which ebb and flow dreamily. The flipside begins with some abstract softnoise, before quickly building to a gristly, buzz drenched psychedelic crescendo, like multiple Spacemen 3 layered on top of one another, until some strings swoop in, and are quickly transformed Ben Frost style, into angry buzzing blackened swells, but only briefly, leaving a final movement, all hushed ambient shimmer, ethereal and abstract, over delicate piano, settled way down in the mix, and slow moving chordal thrum, a darkly dreamy, and gorgeously heartfelt coda. Fantastic!

Debut release from this duo, featuring Adam Wiltzie of aQ-beloved dronescapers Stars Of The Lid. He's teamed up with composer Dustin O'Halloran, for a suite of songs that doesn't veer to far from recent Stars Of The Lid releases, but focus on the piano as the main instrument, with the duo seeking out large spaces and grand pianos, with which to fully realize their sonic vision. The opening track, far too humbly titled "We Played Some Open Chords", lets chords on the piano ring out, the natural reverb carrying the notes off and letting them gradually fade. The piano underpinned by some sweetly sorrowful strings, and some mournful horns, a strangely melancholy bit of modern chamber music, all laid atop Wiltzie's masterful and subtle guitar drone shimmer. The two part "Requiem For The Static King" is lush and lovely and sounds like a soundtrack, all soaring strings, dramatic melodies, the second half veering into slightly darker territory, the piano resurfacing, the strings dialed back, the guitar drones allowed to swell and shimmer, while "Minuet For A Cheap Piano" sounds to be just that, the sound slightly muted, subtly distorted, and again, wreathed in what sounds like strings but could very well be the swirl of droned out guitars, hushed and delicate and dreamlike. "Steep Hills Of Vicodin Tears" is another bit of chamber music, the strings softly swelling, the arrangement strangely rhythmic, as of the instruments were breathing, the song laced with a delicate piano melody, the mood swoonsome and melancholy. "A Symphony Pathetique" the longest track at nearly 13 minutes, seems to be the record's centerpiece, that piano suspended in a field of gauzy dronemusic, the track is epic and gorgeous, a sprawling stretch of hushed minimal beauty, the background sounds in constant motion, shimmering and undulating, overtones loosed to drift dreamily, all the while the piano plucks out painterly melodies, and like all the best songs, we would have been happy to have this stretch out and fill up the entire rest of the disc. Instead, the song fades gradually into the ether, from which drifts "All Farewells Are Sudden", a very UN-sudden sonic farewell, all slow swirling swells, hazy ambience, and most surprising, female vocals, creating a lush lovely droney harmony with the strings, and what in lesser hands could sound maudlin, ends up sounding simply beautiful, especially with the strange addition of what seems to be field recordings, only to have the whole song gradually unfurl into a darkly moody soft focus piano coda. So gorgeous. Fans of recent Stars Of The Lid will be in heaven, and anyone into dreamy mysterious ambience, minimal melodic drones and avant chamber music will definitely find much to love here.

MPEG stream: We Played Some Open Chords And Rejoiced, For The Earth Had Circled The Sun Yet Another Year
MPEG stream: Requiem For The Static King Part Two
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Monsieur Dominique A est un chanteur francais fantastique et nous aimons beaucoup la musique qu'il fait. How's that? Seriously Dominique A has a beautiful, distinct voice and on Auguri it is positively enveloping. His Remue album left many breathless and his others have pretty much the same effect.

Still more awesome French pop from the Lithium label. Dark, shambling minor key laments with spoken/sung French vocals. Shimmering guitars, muted trumpets and skittering drums. (We also have three of his other records, all of them great.)

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SORRY. The newest member of the Invisibl Skratch Piklz releases on 7" on Peanut Butter Wolf's local label.

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SORRY. This is a reissue A.B.G.S.'s early '90s album "Erdlager." Utilizing only junked objects (i.e. steel plates, oil barrels, plastic containers) and recording only in abandoned warehouses, A.B.G.S. fits in with post-industrial niche of German guys banging on metal. Perhaps the result of Thomas Koner's post-production work, these recordings are much more subtle than that of the big egos in Einsturzende Neubauten, Test Dept, and Crash Worship. A.B.G.S. has since disbanded with some of its members forming the haunting drone ensemble Multer. Released on the label run by a fellow from Cranioclast.

UK cd-r label Barl Fire have yet to steer us wrong (after releases from James Blackshaw, Rameses III, Robert Horton, The North Sea and more), and it looks like this A.Lords disc will keep their winning streak going strong. The A.Lords are a mysterious duo from the UK who paint pastoral soundscapes, using church organ, electric organ, piano, toy piano, balalaika, banjo, e-bow, dulcimer, acoustic guitar, bells, glockenspiel, clarinet and recorder. So lovely and lilting. Definitely evokes grassy fields, blue skies and cool breezes.... Simple fingerpicked acoustic guitars, field recordings of burbling streams and chirping birds, warm organ swells, and shimmering sweet ambience, ol' timey melodies, softly cinematic melancholia, sun dappled chimes and whirs all captured in a soft focus soundscape of later afternoon sun and endless summers. So nice. LIMITED TO 100 COPIES. Already sold out at the label. We got a whole bunch but you can bet they'll fly out of here. Packaged in a mini 3" full color cover, housed in a thick plastic sleeve with a printed insert.

MPEG stream: The Dawn Chorus
MPEG stream: Summerhouse

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SORRY.

This has been floating around here a while, listening to it now, it's hard to understand what's taken us so long. It's so goddamn good! Could be the fact that there always seems to be about a million amazing things to try and review and not enough hours in the day, but so what, we're listing it now, and as much as we love pretty much everything Antony Milton does, this might just be one of his best.�� We've said it before, we'll say it again, there's just something divine about the drone. Something completely immersive and spiritual, for some of us, it's as close as sounds can come to becoming physical entities, something not just to listen to, but tangible, touchable, sounds to climb into, to wrap around yourself, to let envelop you, to get lost in. This record is a series of drawn out drones, all sourced from the sounds of a reed organ (with some random background noise, cars and rain, mixed in) and are completely mesmerizing.� The opener alone makes this essential. Six minutes of Niblockian drift, none of that reedy bullshit, this is one huge, lush, layered swirl of sound, the various overtones pulsing and throbbing, creating all sorts of subtle rhythms and not-really-there melodies, soaring and dense, a sound so intense and warm you could almost dive in, float weightless amidst the many layers of sound, another one of those songs we talk about that could, and SHOULD, go on forever and ever... The rest of the disc is just as dreamily drone-y, the sounds of the organ deftly shaped into varied soundscapes, rumbling murky expanses of throb and rumble, that build and build, getting more and more distorted and distressed, until we're almost in SUNNO))) territory, but much more subtle and intimate, not a pummeling as much as a delicate drift, long stretches of industrial whir, jagged shards of upper register sound are muted and chopped into mysterious super subtle rhythms, the timbre of the drone constantly shifting, from slow and low, to warm and rich to washed out and glistening, always with swirls of subtle sonic activity just below the surface. The nearly 13 minute "Some Dreams Must" is the only track that abandons the low end, for a sparkling sky full of upper register streaks, smears of feedback, all becoming more and more intense gradually becoming a beautiful Sunroof!-like cacophony. The record finishes off with a long, lazy, languorous bit of spaced out dreaminess, as much about the whir of the organ's motor as the subtle melodies and drifting firefly like harmonics floating amidst the fragile tendrils of soft sound...

MPEG stream: As The Rain Comes Down
MPEG stream: Sky Voltage (Reeds)

The A.M.P. Studio recordings are the solo work of Richard from Amp. Outside of the delicate drone-rock of Amp, Richard experiments with drum & bass breaks, swooping psych/space rock electronics, egyptian horns, and vaguely darkwave electronica. Still pretty dreamy stuff.

The second solo album from Richard Walker of Amp features two lengthy tracks of atmospheric space-rock that venture into hazy electronic noodling with metronomic downtempo techno pulses and Roy Montgomery like improv-guitar solos.

Black metal bands often usually make a big deal about worshipping Satan, of course, but c'mon, at this point, while we still really enjoy the music, we're kind of over the ooooh, Satan part of it all. But, some bands can still make the Satan stuff seem interesting and seriously potent, like maybe this band really DOES believe in Satan and maybe that's actually kind of scary. Such is the case with Canadian two-man horde A.M.S.G. (not a food additive, the acronym stands for the Latin phrase Ad Majorem Satanae Gloriam, you can probably figure out what that means), featuring members of Rites Of The Degringolade and Gloria Diaboli. A.M.S.G.'s debut full-length for Profound Lore conjures an incredibly convincing and intriguingly original Satanic atmosphere, being in the grand Nordic church-burning black metal tradition (including one of the members having done a stint in jail for selling drugs and guns to finance his band activities) with plenty of cold freezing riff-blurr and rasping croaking vox that remind us of Inquisition, but also bringing in truly extreme blacknoize distortion (the opening moments of the album crackling like Merzbow's electronics) and also, the big surprise, saxophone! Not all the time - but on a couple tracks, probably our favorites here, you'll hear mopey, smokey, noirish sax improv emerge amidst the miasmatic skitter and plod and fuzz, resulting in gorgeously dark and moody but melodic creepy-crawl vibes and making A.M.S.G. the sort of black metal that fans of Bohren & Der Club Of Gore (that band themselves hugely into black metal) ought to check out. And as strange as the Satanic Sax ritual is, that "jazz" element isn't the only surprise here, 'cuz A.M.S.G. worship Satan as much through sound as through song, so while they do standard black metal minor key blasting (and string together some effective hit-you-in-the-pit-of-your-stomach-from-the-pits-of-hell riff sequences), it's often the sheer sounds, and some strange juxtapositions thereof, they conjure with that really gets to us - the way they mix in not just the sax but all sorts of sound FX, noise, varied percussive patterns, mysterious sinister samples, and extreme vokill approaches. It makes for a disturbing headphone listen with the whispered / chanted vocal incantations - if you read the lyrics, its clear that each song is intended as some occult ritual, torn from the pages of the Necronomicon or some other forbidden tome. Their songs will take whatever twists and turns (well, left hand ones only, presumably) that lead to the greater glory of Satan. We might not worship Satan ourselves, but we'll consider worshiping A.M.S.G., at least for the duration of the disc's run time. Unique and compelling. Comes in slipcased jewel case packaging.

MPEG stream: Black Rites Of Black Shadows
MPEG stream: Reincarnation Of The Sun
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SORRY. An anthology of the hypnotic output of this krautrock/electronica pioneer, taken from albums spanning the years 1971 to 1975. Beautiful, rhythmic stuff, way ahead of its time. For fans of Frippertronics, Cluster, Neu, Kraftwerk, Can, and (more recently) Kriedler. Not new, but we just got a few of this fantastic disc at a bargain price, so we thought we'd list it, get it while you can. We've had it before for 19 bucks and it was worth it at that price too!

The Cliff's Notes summary of A.R. Kane often begins and ends with the brief description: "the black Jesus & Mary Chain", which wouldn't be too far off the mark, if it weren't for the gradual / unfortunate shift that Alex Ayuli and Rudy Tambala made from blustery dream-pop to house-lite electronica. This collection of all the band's singles produced outside their three albums proper maps out that history from when they began as a beautifully scalding group that most definitely deserved all the Jesus & Mary Chain / Cocteau Twins comparisons to the less than stellar end of their career when the guitars were ditched in favor of some rather tepid Euro-pop numbers. Fortunately, the best work - the earliest stuff - is all found on disc one; so you can just leave the second disc firmly planted in the package and just forget it. The first single really does embrace that JAMC model fully with Psychocandy style hurricane-shock distortion grafted onto concise post-punk tunes, and even the Bobby Gillespie snare & floor tom dum-dum beat. As A.R. Kane, Ayuli & Tambala only recorded one single for 4AD, the lush, proto-shoegaze ep "Lolita" (1987) with a rather languid dreamy-pop number entitled "Sado-Masochism Is A Must" making the sexual fetish crowd swoon with the squalls of oceanic distortion instead of the sharp sting of a whip. The opening track to the following ep "Baby Milk Snatcher" (1989) is all about blowjobs followed by the rather stiff jangle of "Sperm Travels Like Juggernaut", lending to much critical debate from the stuffy British music press. When A.R. Kane was signed to 4AD, label boss Ivo Watts-Russell suggested that the duo collaborate with the sample-heavy dance-pop outfit Colourbox; and they produced just two tracks - one of which is featured here in the downtempo proto-MBV number "Anitina." The other track was the chart-topping floor filler "Pump Up The Volume", also ascribed to their collaborative name M/A/R/R/S. It's not featured here; but for those who grew up in the late '80s and early '90s, that track is permanently etched into your memory anyway, it being a wholly memorable darkly-disco-pop number. By the end of 1989, A.R. Kane left the guitars behind for sure, with the dubby martial funk of "Is This It?" which cops its moves from the post-industrial outfit 23 Skidoo with plenty of spooky atmospherics and atonal cornet blurting. But after this, it's all downhill. David Byrne signed them to Luaka Bop and A.R. Kane's quality control and their aesthetic choices took a serious nose dive. Buy this for disc one (which is brilliant!) and forget about the second.

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MPEG stream: Anitina (The First Time I See She Dance) Remix
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Can you say "Suicide"? The band, that is. No, this isn't a new Suicide project, but everything -- from the music to the back cover basically says "Alan Vega, I so want to be you." From the same uber-hyped NYC scene that produced the Mouldy Peaches and The Strokes.

A very strange and very musty artifact from the early '90s cassette culture, right before the appetite for such a medium dwindled to absolute zero by the middle of the decade. The mustiness of the industrial tape murk experimentation found on the disc also translates into the mustiness of the artwork, which was deftly fabricated in overloaded excess by Mark Schoenberg of Yeast Culture, with its 12" x 12" oversized sleeve, manilla folder, and cd holder-thing all encrusted with multiple layers of silkscreen, gesso, and acrylic medium. There were three participants in this project, including Eric Blevins (aka A4 / allfours), Frans De Waard (here recording as Kapotte Muziek, although he's also known for too many projects to list), and Tom Cox (aka TAC, not to be confused with an Italian project with a similar acronym). Over three or four years (dates of 1991-1993 are cited with references to earlier experiments as well), numerous tapes were exchanged, but those cassettes seemed to be just one medium in a larger mail-art project which involved Xerox copies of Xerox copies, mangled postcards, and dot-matrix printed letters choked with unwieldy conceptual strategies for further investigation. This exchange was conceived to be an open source to be plundered, vandalized, crosshatched, and recycled, with the seven pieces here being one possible outcome of the whole project. As such, the various tapes got woven into art installations, live performances, and studio renderings, all of which had been re-recorded, re-recycled, and re-reworked. The results of such overlaid recordings end up as a thick industrial din of grey rumblings, interspersed with found object aktionism which aggregate occasionally toward a smashjob / Z'ev territory but mostly stay on slower nocturnal pacing. Of course, all of these events are cut-up, rearranged, interspersed with varispeed ghosts & dubs, choked in tape hiss, and obliterated through overload. The spirit harkens to musique concrete, but without any of the benefits of an arts council grant to make it into an institutional studio. This is as DIY as it gets when it comes to crusty, collage noise. By the time these three are done with everything, it all comes out as a fantastic, subterranean smear of gnarled noise akin to Chop Shop, Small Cruel Party, the aforementioned Yeast Culture, and other obscurant projects of that era. As an art object, too, this is pretty awesome; and limited to 100 copies to boot!

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Debut release from this New York label and it's a doozy. A long lost post punk gem from Belgium. The band is called AA, and this, their first and only record, was originally released in 1981 and even then was limited to 900 copies. The second we heard "Suicide Fever" we knew we had to get this. More on that track in a second. Taking cues from their contemporaries, Joy Division, the Fall, Wire, and of course their labelmates Cultural Amnesia (whose reissue we reviewed her recently), the sound is total stripped down, minimal raw new wave post puck rock, jagged chiming guitars, simple motorik drumming, thick buzzing bloopy basslines, and weary heavily accented sung/spoken vocals. Simple effects warp the sound, delay, flange, reverb, echo, each track is short and sharp, one part, MAYBE two, the melodies super catchy, the songs totally mesmerizing, groovy and coldly Teutonic, but always with some strange but of melodic warmth just below the surface. "Suicide Fever" is the jam though, sounding a little like a less sludgey, more new wave Brainbombs! Total minimal punk pop genius, with a super haunting and hooky main melody and guitar line, those vocals way up in the mix, the lyrics nihilistic and grim, delivered so jadedly, while the bass and drums are locked solid, and the guitars ring out, soaring and chiming, so great. Most definitely the 7" reissue of the year! LIMITED TO 500 COPIES. Each one hand numbered.

It's easy to tell something very witch housey is going on with these guys, present are all the usual signifiers, the band name is actually spelled with a triangle instead of the first 'A' in the band name, the song titles are a mix of lower case and capital letters, as well as all manner of symbols, but the proof as they say is in the creepy, electronic gloom pop ambience, and so it is, as the band unfurls a haunting expanse of swirling ominous ambient synthscapery, before the beats kick, an awesomely distorted and blown out dream-drag groove, a little bit skitter, the beats crumbling in clouds of buzz and crackle, the opener is super epic, almost a sort of cinematic theme type vibe, you can almost imagine some backlit figures walking in slow motion through the ruins of some old Victorian ballroom. And so it goes, we're gonna stop feeling like we need to defend witch house, cuz separated from the blog hyped hipster championed genre signifier, there's very little NOT to dig about this stuff, and this tape in particular. The second track offers up a sort of decayed Portishead, a skittery slowcore downtempo creep, the vocals an almost death metal cookie monster growl, but slowed way down so it sounds even more demonic, the in-the-red synth stabs, that sound more like a malfunctioning dubstep bass wobble only add to the woozy off kilter feel. There are of course creepy angelic (demonic?) female vox, gloomy and gothy and dreamy, with later tracks almost sounding like bastardized gloom pop versions of radio ballads. For everyone into Zola Jesus, LA Vampires, Circuit Des Yeux, Esben And The Witch, as well as the usual witch house culprits like Salem, Mellow Grave and Mater Suspiria Vision. But again, unlike those outfits, Aimon deliver something more darkly dreary and fuzzy, gloom-poppy and bestially balladic. Of course as these things always are, EXTREMELY LIMITED, includes a download coupon as well!

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Where is the "hit" on this record? It seems to be all filler, despite Timbaland's production work on several tracks and also one written by Misy Elliot. Just really generic slow jams laced with Aaliyah's pretty voice (multitracked and tweaked within an inch of its life.) Hm.

Anyone familiar with the name Aan? Well howabout Uton? Right, Uton, one of our favorite Finnish exports (among many!), and one of the least prolific, who somehow survive without releasing a cd-r every two weeks. In fact a new Uton record is a cause to celebrate around here. So we were equally excited to discover this latest release from Uton Satellite Aan, who take Uton's already blissed out tribal drift, and spaces it out even more, turning it into some gorgeous cloud of foresty drone, a gentle assemblage of various vibrating strings, and simple muffled percussion, fragmented melodies, fluttering birdlike trills, bits of acoustic guitar, bleating horns, distant droning swells, all tenuously held together, the various parts allowed to drift off, and then later resurface from amidst a cloud of glistening distant siren like wails. Another band that definitely sounds like they're channeling legendary Japanese drone collective Taj Mahal Travellers, and one of the few who seem like they understand the spirit behind that sort of soundmaking. Music as an organic entity. As a spirit, that can not be captured, only guided. The members of Aan are shamen, coaxing the spirits from their instruments, then shaping them, guiding them, arranging them into dark dronelike shapes, capturing their essence on tape, and then letting the sounds drift apart and return to whence they came. So lovely. Another fantastic chunk of dreamy meditative forest bliss. Beautifully packaged too, and oversized full color booklet, filled with striking tripped out black and white images, the cd housed in a pouch affixed to the inside back cover.

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Strange atmospheric forest folk from Finland from the dup of Uton and Kulkija, their first meeting back in 2004 and it is a divine noise indeed!

We know you're not supposed to judge a book by its cover, but c'mon!!! When that book is a cd by a couple of Finnish primitive black metal weirdos called Aanal Beehemoth and said cover features one of the members getting all Nosferatu in shades of green and white under a scrawled metal logo, with a little circle in the corner that reads "In Nekro Satanik Stereo Paranoia Sound"!! And on the other side you'll see both band members in ultra creepy clown-like corpsepaint, tongues out, shooting up, next to some ransom letter text that reads "100% Ultra Misery Blackout Metal Nekropunk Psykosound", and then let's not forget the inside cover, that features again both band members, in crazy corpsepaint, their names now revealed to be Deathly Fightar and Crazy Bomber (umlauts over the vowels of course) who play respectively: Deathbeat, OD guitar, bass and BG vox (that's Deathly) and Exorcism, bass, fuzz guitar and organ (!) (that's Crazy)... You see what we're getting at, we knew this would rule before we even threw it on, it was just a matter of HOW it would rule, and just how much. The answer of how much is easier to address, cuz it's a WHOLE FREAKING SHIT TON, that's how much it rules, but exactly how might be a bit harder to explain. Needless to say, these guys are fucked up and freaky, their blackness not so much of the blasting buzzy variety and the pounding punkish lo-fi raw and primitive variety, think Akitsa, Malveillance, Ash Pool. Ancestors, but even more punk rock, and weirdly poppy. Just check out the kick ass opener (after the ubiquitous creepy intro) "Dirty Soul", it almost sounds more like Turbonegro or Brainbombs, bounding punk rock rhythms, looped stripped down riffage, but then they paint it black and wrap it all up in tangled squiggly leads, the vocalist delivering his hellish sermons in an awesome croak / bark vokill, totally wrapped in reverb and seriously unhinged. The reverb sometimes going haywire making the vocals sound all dubbed out. As the record goes on, the blackness recedes and these guys sound more and more punk rock, which is not a bad thing at all, the sound is maybe like Darkthrone at their punkest, but this is Finnish after all, and these guys are nuts, so tracks slip into washed out woozy ambience, guitars explode into squalls of atonal Greg Ginn-ish freakouts, fuzzy organs drift in and out giving some of the tracks a weird underground garage psych vibe (check out "Witch Hunt"), that said, there are definitely some moments of full on frenzied classic sounding blackness, it's just that more often than not those parts lead directly into something much more fucked up and off kilter and WAY bizarre. This got released as a free download a while back, but it's way cooler to actually finally have the cd, with all its garish freaky green tinted artwork and weird scrawled lyrics, and of course with the download you would never have know that this was "recorded in stinky misery cubic helvete during period of total black morkness, mental distortion & painful agony of ghouls with the helping hands of Satan (naturally) $ Ass Lipstick, Pelvis, Onslow, under the influence of HELL!!!!".

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The basic "band math" of this new project on Editions Mego is also, unsurprisingly, kind of what it sounds like, Aanipaa consisting of 1/2 of arty American doomdrone outfit SUNNO))), teamed up with 1/2 of Finnish electronic experimentalists Pan Sonic! Specifically, it's a collaboration between the ubiquitous Stephen O'Malley and Mika Vainio, with help from some friends, recorded in Berlin (at Einsturzende Neubauten's studio) and mixed in Seattle by Randall Dunn. Talk about a "stupor" group. Ambient and ominous, Aanipaa on their debut Through A Pre-Memory conjure a desolate sprawl of slo-mo glitchery and drone, with sparse distorted strum interspersed over the skeletal rhythm of disembodied machine beats. A string section, which features Eyvind Kang on viola, brings in additional otherworldly textures, upping the drone-dirge density. There's also unsettling vocal samples, and tape manipulations. Speaking of unsettling, if this wasn't already scary sounding enough, O'Malley's former Khanate bandmate Alan Dubin (ex-OLD as well, and also of Gnaw, who have a new disc out we'll be reviewing soon) occasionally provides some of his unique, anguished vocal stylings, "singing" the words of Russian modernist poet Anna Akhmatova on the first and last of the four loooooong tracks here - the album clocks in at over 75 minutes. Imagine a glitch-ridden remix of a Khanate track, stretched out so that it's even slower and sparser, more encompassing of the void... but also stretched out so far that some welcome light shines through. For despite the mood of morose menace - and downright terror - channelled through some of these tracks, this album can be quite beautiful as well, grindingly glorious, especially when those strings come into play. Not that we would expect anything less than impressive, and intense, from these talents. Part modern avant classical, part minimal (very minimal) techno, part multi-o'd industrial dooooooooooooom, Aanipaa is utterly abject, electronically abstract, possibly alienating. And most excellent. Comes in a lovely three-panel digipack cd or gatefold double lp package.

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Wanted to get a bunch of these, but alas, only a few came into the shop. Strange elliptical tape loop manipulation of glittering tones hung against the black sky and laced with ample amounts of tape hiss from one of the few from the black-noise imprint Vaald who has stepped outside the veil of anonymity. Even so, the Finnish sound-artist Olli Aarni doesn't offer much in the way of context, though the title from his native tongue does translate as something rather poetic and effusive: "Sunrise In Pixels". Limited to 30 copies. Sold out at the label.

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Wow! A new Aavikko full length! This just might be the year of the Aavikko. When we first slapped this aluminum disc on our system we must admit we were a little taken aback: Hi-Fi Aavikko? Could it be? For so long these Casio-crazy Finns have championed the most primitive of production aesthetics with a sound only once removed from a ring tone. But here they were in crystal clarity and using the entire spectrum of the audible sound range. Did they get a sponsorship with some big keyboard company? Sources close to Aavikko are keeping tight-lipped about the group's new cache of keyboard equipment. Okay, let's put this in perspective before we go any further: a "hi-fi" Aavikko is still "lo-fi" by most standards, so don't expect any enormous shifts in the Aavikko sound. Bigger than their production changes is perhaps their new-found love of exotica and classic space-age bachelor pad music as a launching pad for their new compositions. Andee pointed out that a lot of the tunes on Back From The Futur sound like a lo-fi Tipsy. Their retro-futurist vision also smacks mightily of Kraftwerk (vocoder makes its way into a couple songs as well), Gershon Kingsley with bubbling and arpeggiating synth lines, catchy melodies and upbeat tempos, and maybe even the soundtracks for Roger Corman sci-fi flicks. We love it!

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A whole lot has changed since we first laid our ears on this glorious slab of cinematic Finnish casiocore way back in the twentieth century. At the time Derek, the debut full length from these Finnish freaks, was released, it was just about the weirdest and coolest thing we'd ever heard. And the last few years haven't changed that one bit! What has changed is the fact that now, the whole world, at least the underground music world, have their eyes squarely on Finland's fertile music scene. Eating up anything and everything, and it's all amazing! Circle, Kemialliset Ystavat, Avarus, Anaksimandros, Paavoharju and on and on and on. But before all these bands (except for Circle) Aavikko were busy creating impossibly catchy, Eastern tinged synthesizer scores for imaginary Westerns, or Bollywood movies, or whatever crazy Finnish movie could handle being accompanied by this maniacal music. Think of it this way, the fictional filmscores of Godspeed You Black Emperor or Barry Adamson are meant to be played at 33 rpm, to capture all of the scope, space, and time of their bleak sonic imagery, right? Well supposing that is indeed true, then Aavikko's utterly absurd and gloriously frolicsome music is some alternative universe version of those filmscores meant for 33, but played at 45. Or heck, 78!! Manic twin casios wiggle out catchy tunes that could easily have sprung from the mad mind of Martin Denny, had he been composing for 60's spy thrillers. Tomi Leppanen (Aavikko's human metronome, and currently the drummer for Circle AND Pharoah Overlord) propels the casio madness with pseudo disco syncopations and hyper-active breakbeats, while second hand synths weave surprisingly lush noir soundscapes, equal parts moody cocktaily jazz, propulsive spy thriller soundtrack muzak, spastic mechanical sounding krautrock and pretty much every musical stop in between. The surprising thing is that every song, no matter what strange twist or direction it takes, is wildly fun, unbearably catchy and weird as fuck. Full of hooks and unlikely sounds, funky grooves and hauntingly playful circus music, this record is one of the greatest warm and fuzzy, feel good, psychedelic groove lounge freakout records EVER! Aavikko's original label Bad Vugum coined the term maniacal monkey jazz for Aavikko, and we're not sure we could come up with anything better! We can't tell you how psyched we are to have this back in stock. This is one of THE essential Finnish records, definitely one of our top five Finnish records EVER. This reissue is so long overdue as Derek has been out of print practically for freaking EVER! 7 or 8 years! Until now! Plus, this reissue includes two bonus tracks from the also long (and still!) out of print Aavikko cd ep. And who can argue with MORE Aavikko?!?!

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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. Finnish synth pop nuts Aavikko are back! Now available for a very limited time Aavikko have teamed up with Kabar, an alleged terrorist suspect. The group met up with Kabar apparently by chance when they found themselves detained together at the Las Vegas airport in 2002. Due to a freak mix up, Kabar was released with Aavikko when they passed their security clearance. A singer in his own, mysteriously unnamed country, Kabar joined Aavikko to record one song at a Las Vegas studio. This 7" contains that track, an instant Aavikko classic, and a "Spoken Word Story" (a retelling of the crazy circumstances that led to their meeting set to music). The track, "Eye of the Leopard" is the very definition of kick ass, third world keyboard rock. Erstwhile electro-punk posers take heed, "this is the real experimental shit!" Comes pressed on beautiful, incredibly thick and heavy blue vinyl. Super limited edition, we can't stress that enough.

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Fuck. That's always a great way to start any decent review here at Aquarius. Fuck Yeah! That's even better, and certainly more appropriate for a disc we've been lusting after for so long. Aavikko is one of those elusive bands that we never seem to be able to keep in stock long enough to escape becoming a mere legend and a fading memory. The problem seems to reside in a lifetime of poor distribution and lackluster label attention. But now Aquarius has secured a direct pipeline to the band in the hopes of rectifying this shortage. Aavikko, for those who've yet to experience their magic, are easily the reigning kings of "electronic instrumental rock" (their own genre?). Hailing from Finland -- that in and of itself should be a clue -- Aavikko have honed a lo-fi electro-punk sound that's oft imitated, but never equaled. Using only cheap electric organs (most notably the Yamaha PSS Home Organ), drums and archaic analog recording technology, Aavikko compose Slavic disco, garage surf punk with rumba beats and insanely catchy pop tunes that bring to mind soundtracks to 8-bit videogames of yesteryear. History Of Muysic is an impressive collection of both no longer available Aavikko classics and unreleased tracks dating back to the group's inception in 1995. The latter includes their first rehearsal demo, outtakes from the Derek! ep sessions and their theme for the Kumman Kaa TV series (which has become one of the most popular ring tones in Finland!), among others. In the long lost and now out of print category, we're most excited by the inclusion of the eight tracks from the first, self-titled Aavikko 7". These are a veritable holy grail of primitive electronic rock and expose imitators for the slick hi-fi hucksters they really are. Probably recorded direct to cassette, you can even hear the tape drag and occasional drop outs. Fellow lovers of Bjorn Olsson will be excited by this and all analog anomalies indelibly pitted into the digital realm. All under three minutes in length, the tracks on the eponymous debut are tight and gritty pop ditties, completely trimmed of fat: the words 'overproduced' and 'Avvikko' will never be found in the same sentence but for this one. Also included on this anthology is the entire Oriental Baby CD, their collaboration with Mono Pause "Of Stomping Men", an unreleased live recording off of the beloved WFMU in NJ, their contribution to the Team Yamaha compilation and last, but in no way least, their most recent single, for the first time on CD, the amazing Eye of the Leopard with Kabar. Really folks, do yourself a favor...

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At last, we've gotten some import copies of the latest full-length from this beloved Finnish band! We'd heard rumors of its release for some time, so we were thrilled to finally track it down. At first listen, while the Casios and '80s video game noises

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Electronic. Muysic. Finland. When we see those three words, which appear in small type on the top right corner of the cover to this album, we get pretty excited. Even when Music is spelled Muysic. ESPECIALLY when it's spelled like that. 'Cause that's means it's an Aavikko album. The mostly instrumental Finnish synthesizer/synthesizer/drums trio's new disc, Novo Atlantis, is finally here! Now, each album of theirs has always been a little bit different, but we've always loved Aavikko, from their early "maniacal monkey jazz" days as a lo-fi Casiocore band circa 1997's Derek to their more recent and polished productions of space age bachelor pad exotica like 2005's Back From The Futer. So what's in store for listeners on Novo Atlantis? Initially we were struck by this album's even MORE electronic sound, taking Aavikko into techno-disco territory, more computery, less live band sounding. Though human metronome Tomi Leppanen (also the drummer for AQ faves Circle) is still behind the drum kit, there's plenty of purely electronic beats and rhythms on here it seems. Yet at the same time, this album also features French horn, trombone, trumpet, tuba, and even church pipe organ!! So while on one had it's all very futuristic (in a spaced out cosmic disco way), this also takes inspiration from way way back, the pre-electronic, classical music era in fact. You could call Novo Atlantis the "switched-on Bach" version of Aavikko, or more precisely, "switched-on Hoppel", Egil Hoppel allegedly being an obscure Finnish composer of the baroque period, discussed in the sleeve notes of Novo Atlantis. Supposedly he was some sort of child prodigy (he only lived 1722-1737!), an organist whose music has apparently become a major influence on Aavikko's new direction. We say allegedly and supposedly since we halfway suspect they made him him up, that he's a hoax much like those "funerary violin" fellows. Probably some quick Googling would resolve the question, but we prefer not to know for sure. If Aavikko invented him, they certainly were thorough about it - there are two purported Hoppel compositions included on the cd format as a hidden bonus track (we won't tell you how to find it, but check out our review of the most recent Agoraphobic Nosebleed disc for a clue!). And having heard those, it does seem like you can hear Hoppel's purported influence right in this disc's very first track, "Syntaksis", which definitely has an Aavikko goes classical feel, like a lot of the stuff here having shades of the "classically trained" approach of all those Moog-laden '70s prog keyboard bands a la ELP and krautrockers Novalis... But don't let that make you think this is somehow stuffy, over-serious or highbrow or whatever, nope not at all, far from it as any Aavikko fan would guess. While it's got its moody moments, most of Novo Atlantis is percolating, infectious electronic fun. Super groovy, quirky, krauty - in the Kraftwerk, Giorgio Moroder sense of krauty. The album ends with what must be Aavikko's longest track ever, the 15 minutes of "Novo Atlantis II". Wow, quite an epic, with echoes of Joe Meek's "Telstar" in its melodies, and long mesmeric burbling sequencer trance-outs, something like early '80s Tangerine Dream, Wolfgang Duren, or Zombi's "Sapphire". A Lindstrom remix seems to be in order, where is it? Certainly Aavikko's new album fits nicely into the current disco craze. It also goes well with our obsession with skweee, too. Electronic muysic Finland, hooray!

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THIS IS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT OR OTHERWISE UNAVAILABLE TO US AT THE MOMENT, SO PLEASE DO NOT ORDER IT. SORRY.

SORRY. The Finnish Casio-pop band we so adore from their two discs on the Bad Vugum label return with this six-song ep (that we've finally tracked down import copies of). Consider this cd for your next party of circus freaks. With "Oriental Baby" as the soundtrack, it's guaranteed to go on into the very wee hours. A feverishly demented Denny-esque boogie session with no end. The neighbours downstairs will reduce their broom handle to sawdust as they pound away at their ceiling. Definitely music to put a gleeful yet puzzled grin on your face. Featuring occasional Circle percussionist Tomi Leppanen. Wonderfully disturbingly fun.

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